Commit No Nuisance meets Groovin the Moo

By Arne Sjostedt

16 April 2015 — 11:00pm

It's almost Groovin the Moo time, which is fantastic for anyone who plans to go. Even more fantastic for Canberra art collective Commit No Nuisance, who have been commissioned to decorate the festival.

Chris Dalzell, or Walrus to his mates, is one of the collective's members and says Commit No Nuisance began as a Canberra response to a live art event called Secret Walls.

Canberra art collective Commit No Nuisance will decorate the Groovin the Moo festival.Credit:

"We try tried to get it to come to Canberra so that we could showcase Canberran street art and artists but they felt that it wasn't big enough in Canberra to do so we decided to make our own," Dalzell says.

Setting up the event with Aaron Ridley at Belconnen bar La De Da, the collective hold live art battles where artists split into two teams and work on a canvas each. "They're given a certain amount of time to make the raddest picture," Dalzell says. "And then people vote on it and the winning picture gets put up in the bar itself."

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Though they won't be painting live at Groovin the Moo Dalzell says, "it will pretty much be a selection of some of the known names within Commit No Nuisance and their styles that will be showcased at the event."

One of the artists involved is Jess Cochrane, who is studying a Bachelor of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong.

"I always say yes to things rather than saying no," Cochrane says. "And I think saying yes to Commit No Nuisance was a really awesome thing because you get to collaborate with all these different artists and you get to meet a lot of different people. And I think that's a really good thing because it's so important to build a network of people."

For Groovin the Moo, the collective will be responsible for creating art works to decorate the temporary fencing that borders the festival. "You can do what you want, underneath a brief," Dalzell says. "Each year they have a theme and they ask artist to respond to that theme."

The theme this year is "Psychedelic Oasis". The concept, Dalzell explains, relates to how people who live in rural towns and non-metropolitan centres would normally have to travel large distances to get to a music festival.

Something Groovin the Moo has made a point of changing.

"The idea is about travelling through these rural, outback environments and arriving at Groovin the Moo as if it's like this crazy party oasis out in the middle of the bush," says Dalzell.

A crazy, well-decorated party oasis if Commit No Nuisance have anything to do with it.